Image: Marc Jones.

MEGA Fuels Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Brett Metcalfe has revealed he will return to his American home at the conclusion of the current Motul MX Nationals season, abandoning plans to line up in the Australian Supercross Championship.

Metcalfe was originally slated to race the nationals and supercross with SD3 Husqvarna until that deal collapsed, later gaining a lifeline of sorts with the factory Kawasaki outfit once Aleksandr Tonkov returned to Russia mid-season.

Initial hopes to secure a deal for the second half of the outdoors and through supercross were complicated by the fact that MEGA Fuels Monster Energy Kawasaki had already signed 2015 champion Dan Reardon in advance, prompting Metcalfe to decide on heading back to California following Coolum and assess his future.

“At this stage I don’t have plans to race supercross,” Metcalfe told MotoOnline.com.au. “With this team, the agreement we worked out was just the five rounds of outdoors and then I’m heading back to the States in September. Obviously Dan had a deal done with the team for supercross here, so this was for outdoors only.

“We’ll go back to the States, evaluate everything, and it’s obviously been a difficult season with everything that’s gone on. Again, I’m just thankful that this team stepped up, gave me an excellent bike and environment – the platform to go and race at a good level. We’ll see what comes up for next season.”

With two podiums to his credit in two rounds with Kawasaki at Nowra and Shepparton, Metcalfe has helped turn the season around for the Troy Carroll-managed organisation and preliminary discussions have already taken place regarding a potential full season in 2018. But first, the 33-year-old will have to make a decision if he is prepared to race-on in the latter stages of his career and with a young family splitting time between Australia and California.

“[Continuing] is definitely on the plans,” he added. “We just have to evaluate all my options and I do want to continue to race, so for me that’s the first thing I needed to come to terms with. Really, after the championship’s done, that’s when I will think what I want to do. As of now I want to race next year, this is an awesome team and we’ve already spoken a little bit in terms of next year, so I’m interested to stay.

“I’ll weigh it up whether or not I want to retire – yes or no – and right now it’s no [laughs]. Who knows, in two months time it could be yes, but in this sport you just have to take everything as it comes and be prepared. I’ll get through here, evaluate the options and obviously I’ll have some options to come back to AUS. This is what I really wanted to do, ever since I left Australia in ’02, I always wanted to come back and race in Australia for a couple of years, so I’m getting to live out that goal and it’s awesome – I enjoy being here.”

With Metcalfe currently lining up alongside premier class newcomer Nathan Crawford in the MX Nationals, the MEGA Fuels Monster Energy Kawasaki team has had popular Queensland international Reardon signed for supercross since the beginning of the year.